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Current Network Design Project Scope Objectives & Procedures

Network Assessment — Fulton 58

Current Network Design

Fulton School District currently has a T1 connection with MOREnet that services a Wide Area Network of three sites in addition to the Local Area Network at the High School shown in Figure 1. Three elementary schools are connected via local 64 Kbps frame relay connections to the serial port of the MOREnet node router. The ethernet port of the MOREnet router at the high school connects to a Bay Accelar 1100 switch with eight fiber ports and 16 10/100BASE-T ports. The switch supports hubs, servers and an omnidirectional wireless bridge. Three other bridges connect to this via 2 Mbps links supporting three additional sites.

Figure 1. Fulton Wide Area Network

Project Scope

Currently the elementary schools complain of slow e-mail access (the e-mail server is at the high school across the WAN links). Preliminary analysis with Intermapper shows the serial connection to Bartley Elementary consistently is close to maximum bandwidth utilization. Bush Elementary will receive a new T1 for the eMINTS project. The general scope of this project is to analyze the TCP/IP traffic on the WAN and the elementary LANs to determine if additional bandwidth is necessary for a reasonable level of performance.

The elementary schools and high school each have their own NT domain with one-way trust relationships established. Previously one WINS server at the high school served all the WAN sites as well but they could not see resources at those sites. We will evaluate their current NT environment including WINS configurations to fix this problem as well as to reduce bandwidth utilization.

Electrical problems a few months ago caused connectivity problems on the high school LAN. We will use appropriate tools to isolate this problem and resolve it.

Microsoft Proxy Server has been purchased and the district would like to implement it next year. If necessary we may install Proxy Server as a tool initially to determine the effect of Web caching on their Internet bandwidth utilization.

Using all data collected during the network assessment project we will recommend circuit upgrades if necessary, changes in NT environment and specific implementation of Microsoft Proxy Server for the district.

Objectives & Procedures

1. The first objective of this project is to analyze the bandwidth utilization of the node router and the 64 Kbps connections.
1. Estimate bandwidth utilization on node router and downstream sites (Kentrox on node router and Concorde on downstreams).
2. Analyze traffic on the WAN serial ports using RADCOM equipment. Estimate percentages of traffic over a period of time. For example NetBIOS requests, HTTP requests, etc. Look at errors and make sure there are no line problems.
   
   
2. After WAN traffic is analyzed look at LAN traffic for each site.
1. Use the Observer laptop at each site to help characterize the traffic on each LAN and ports on switch. Use cable tester to check suspicous cables and remove if necessary.
2. Analyze Observer results to determine any unnecessary traffic and remove it. Primarily we would look at IP traffic from the WAN, WINS updates, etc. In addition we would look at unncessary LAN traffic. Some browsing, netbeui, RIP broadcasts, etc.
3. If necessary use Accelar Switch to troubleshoot bad hubs. See Figure 2.
   
   

Figure 2. Acecelar switch on Fulton High School LAN



3. Based on WAN and LAN analysis determine if the NT environment could be changed to lessen LAN/WAN traffic. WINS Server configurations, Domain model, resource access, etc. At this point we will also consider the implementation of MS Proxy Server for caching only.
1. Make recommended changes in NT domain/WINS
2. Install MS Proxy Server
3. Enable Web caching



4. Re-examine WAN utilization.
1. Problems solved?
2. Utilization still too high? Recommend upgrading connections.
   
   
5. Based on previous results, recommend Proxy Server implementation.